I really don’t know what Monckton’s game is. Watt’s has just enough sense, or take advice from other that do, to dissociate themselves from the nonsense in PRP. In contrast, Monckton seeks to associate with the stupidity that will make it even move obvious how clueless he is. I presume he is grandstanding and doesn’t actually intend to put his money and time on the table to publish outrageous fantasies.

I think Anthony’s considered where the butter is and has flipped his slice of bread:

All I can say is that I hope the people that tried to publish in the first PRP journal (now closed) find a friendly home there. It will be interesting to watch it evolve and I wish them all the success they deserve.

If Monckton thinks he will be able to publish the first issue of the new PRIP in March, he is showing that he knows nothing about scientific publishing. I have just had a paper accepted (not in print, just accepted) and it was submitted last March (many thanks to the reviewers and action editor, who all did an excellent job). I would be rather surprised if anything actually comes of this, and if it does, sadly I would not be at all surprise if it was a repeat of previous errors.

It takes time to do a proper review. It doesn’t take very long to collect a few pages of pseudoscience nonsense.

A year from submit to publish sounds slow — what field? I’m used to it taking just a few months (except journals in CS, but those are just for tenure & promotions; the real publication is at a conference).

Frustratingly, that’s not unusual in ecology. I’ve seen it not infrequently stretch to 18 months…

I’m used to it taking just a few months (except journals in CS, but those are just for tenure & promotions; the real publication is at a conference).

Heh, at our insttitution the heirarchy see it the other way around – for the upper academic levels conference publications are accepted as contribution to academic performance only to a point – beyond that journal papers are preferenced. In some disciplines though (the particularly ‘applied’ ones) it’s definitely true that the conference paper is the cutting edge.

In computer science, you hash out ideas in workshops and tech reports, you get rejected from a conference or two (3-month turnaround), and finally you get it through the review process and the paper is published. However, computer scientists have non-computer scientists on their tenure and promotion committees. If you’re up for tenure and you only have best-paper-in-conference awards to point to, the physicist on your committee will vote against you. So you half-assedly send things to journals, where the turnaround is measured in years. I gave up on one publication after three years without it having been sent out for review yet (!), whereas another got through decently fast, just over one year to get the reviews back, and another year until it appeared.

If only we could get Monckton on board to review our papers, turnaround would be much snappier.

If Christopher Monckton were to come out and say that everything he’s done over the years was part of an elaborate and long-running practical joke designed to demonstrate the gullibility of the so-called sceptics, it would explain everything perfectly.

And yet this stuff is as important to understanding the conservative ascendancy as are the internecine organizational and ideological struggles that make up its official history—if not, indeed, more so. The strategic alliance of snake-oil vendors and conservative true believers points up evidence of another successful long march, of tactics designed to corral fleeceable multitudes all in one place—and the formation of a cast of mind that makes it hard for either them or us to discern where the ideological con ended and the money con began.

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